Funny Bones

5 humorous reads to lift you out of the winter doldrums

By David Podgurski

A fine, (relatively) recent selection of funny fare confronts readers in bookstores’ Humor sections: Bossypants; Dad Is Fat; 50 Shades of Bacon; Let’s Pretend This Never Happened;I Am America (And So Can You!). Below, however, are five titles that will keep you laughing, tickling your funny bones during this frigid month.

For years, The Onion has been keeping readers satirically sane by, well, creating insane, guffaw-inducing fake stories about insane topics. Funny thing is, these make more sense of the world than most serious news outlets. This is your encyclopedia, as it were, for the “known” world. Enjoy.

If you missed out on MAD Magazine, then you missed out on a lot of superb stuff (what? You don’t know what a MAD Fold-In is?!?!?). Here’s where you can bridge that gap, or, if you were a longtime fan, relive the glory days of a great publication.

The Internet diverts us, although it also distracts. Pascal Lemire’s collection of canine finger-pointing is a perfect book to remind us why the Web just works. If you need more proof of the power of the ’Net in book form, try Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half—it’s got everything you need.

If you haven’t heard of McSweeney’s, and want to laugh, buy this book, and then go here. Witty, cleverly crafted and strangely themed, even outrageously simple tales, snippets and oddments from one of the Web’s finest workplace diversions, this collection fits nicely on your bookshelf. (Or in your work-drawer.)

The thinking person’s humor book? Maybe. At the very least, this anthology of New Yorker humor writing will make you feel less slapsticky and more upmarket about giggling aloud. That’s the idea, or rather, the mystique that has always surrounded the magazine that James Thurber and Dorothy Parker called home. I just like the cartoons.